Tools

Have been using vSphere extensively over the years and we finally started using vCenter to manage all the hosts. I am happy but not excited, not because it is bad but I just don't feel the craftsmanship.

I use a lot of tools at work and I picked what to use all with a reason. Lately, I spend a lot of time in configuration management and Puppet is what I am using. A similar offering by VMWare is the Orchestrator.

With both tools on hand, why would I prefer learning Puppet than Orchestrator? Probably comes down to,

Openness
I am not confining myself to a particular stack of technology, I can use Puppet to manage instance virtualizing on whatever platform.

User base
I can pick up a lot of resources on this tool since this is so common.

Best of breed
Puppet focus on what it do best and rely on (or people find a way to) other tools to fulfill the other needs. For instance, we are using GIT to manage all the .pp files versioning, access control by PKI, etc. While for Orchestrator, it is taking care all by itself. If vSphere is the only tools we use, this will not be a problem but we are not.

By the same token, this explain why I would use New Relic, Zabbix, Jenkins and Nexus instead of vFabric.

Stepping forward to 120

I love photography.

I love seeing around and always want to capture the special moment. The falling leaves, the sparkling eyes of the kids, their un-reserved smile.

I am stunned when I see the the photos taken by Hideaki Hamada - the atmosphere, the framing, the facial expression of the boys, the color, the tone. And I found the framing is interesting and turns out they are taken by a "medium format camera".

So I started looking around on what it meant, how does it differ from the 135. From there, I learnt about the format, the camera and seeded the desire to step forward.

I looked at all the format and decided 6x6 or 6x7 is what I want. The square format always hold a place (that's why I love using Hipstmatic) and I think I am quite ready to compose in this format. And next comes down to gears. Looked through Mamiya, Pentax and Fuji. Unsurprisingly, I go for Fuji, for it to be the lightest among all and the EBC coated prime lens is always my favorite. But I am not too certain about the focal length (28mm as in 135) as it's not the focal length I am most comfortable in.

After weeks of struggle and analysis, rolls of films I have taken. I know that I WANT to take pictures and this gear can bring me the sharpness in focus and clarity in imaging that I always strive for.

So after two trip to Filme, I have brought the Fuji 670W home, together with 3 rolls of films. Film, like fountain pen, give me a sense of un-repeatable happening. Unlike using digital camera, which you can just blast the shoot and pick one you feels right. For film camera, you have to be totally focused in getting the absolute right.

Now I have to get myself familiar with this, take a lot of picture and enjoy.

Think, before you ask.

We encounter questions more than answer and we would love to get the questions offload from our ship as soon as possible.

So we either do it ourselves, or ask others to do that for you, partially or in whole. And since we have so much to achieve and thus, a natural tendency is to ask the help from others.

The intent itself is fine but think about the last question you have asked. Is it along the line of "Something doesn't work" or "The app is so slow".

The question I am being asked most by the developer is, "Ronnie, I clicked the link bit it doesn't work". The second runner-up is, "The site is slow, why is it?"

These are very open ended question and lots of possibilities. But one thing in common is how one (or I) can start investigating it on - log reading. But people are just lazy and would rather get an answer straight from someone, instead of figuring it out themselves.

They can get the answer quick, but traded off from learning. Every single incident is a chance to learn, you pass it over to someone (or me) just meant giving up the opportunity to learn. You forgot what you've been told very easily but remember life long if you worked this out yourself. So next time, think before you ask.

Beauty of simple

Spent 3 nights at a machiya in Kyoto. One thing that strike me the most is they way they layout the space. It isn't spacious but still, significant amount of spaces are reserved for things like, a small zen garden, a square in the living room for displaying art piece.

In Hong Kong, those will be blocked as a cupboard or something for storage.

But this demonstrate how the two races value against beauty, or arts, into their life. For Japanese, I can see the beauty is indeed a necessity, which they will put it into practice in the meal they serve, the way they dress, all things that happened in daily life. They would given up, space for example, for embracing the arts into their life.

Now, I am practicing the idea of having less but embracing the remains, embracing the room we granted for ourselves.

Why do estimation always wrong?

It's been asked by every boss or project manager. Everyone got their own version but mine is always like,

- too religious towards the end date
- over estimate the efficiency
- a tendency to accept excessive risks

When a new project started, the first thing being asked (or told) is, "When could it complete?'" or "We must finish by bla bla bla.".

In the first scenario, even though the end date is not pre-defined but the project owner usually already got something in mind. Thus, the end date looks flexible but not really that flexible. Whenever the team comes back with a date later then his desire, the usual and only response is "Finding more people to do it"!

Instead of spending time to discuss on what the risk are, "solutions" are being put forward right away. The outcome? Pitfall is being skimmed through.

Another common management principal is, parallelism. Can we work in parallel? Could a task breaks further down? It could work, but only if the team is well balanced. When the project demands a particular skillset which only a single entity can fulfill, asking him to context switch and leverage the resources will not shorten the development time. Also, there's an overhead on communication, which if not managed properly, can result in tasks undone.

When we do estimation, we are always ignoring the fact that we are not as efficient as we want to be. Able to spend 70% on the project is already very efficient. Take myself as an example, I am spending 50% of my time helping to team to resolve projects issues, 20% on daily matters (like development and operation daily issues). But I am still assigning tasks to myself which leaves out to at most 30% of my available time.

Are there solutions? There is, but takes time to practice, which I am still working hard on.

Be persistent. Don't give it up or rush out for a decisoin even when we are pressed. There are not as many "life-or-death" issues. When we need to labor a baby, there's no short cut but 9 months of pregnancy.

Be realistic. If we can only afford 30% of work hours, stick with that. Don't try to fool yourself, or your project manager that the week after will be better.

I don't know about you but to me, family and health is more important than work. Save your late night and weekend, you've got a life project to fulfill which don't stand a second chance.